The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [145]
Her face was still, but not frozen; her eyes rested on his with something like compassion. Still, he looked away, back at the gun whose barrel he gripped. His fingers, soot-stained, had left greasy black ovals on the metal; she reached out and took it from him, rubbing the marks away with the hem of her shirt.
He let her take it, and watched, rubbing his dirty fingers against the side of his breeches.
“It’s just . . . does it not seem that if ye must kill a man, it should be on purpose? Meaning it?”
She didn’t answer, but her lips pursed slightly, then relaxed.
“If you shoot someone with this, Roger, it will be on purpose,” she said quietly. She looked up at him, then, blue eyes intent, and he saw that what he had taken for compassion was in fact a fierce stillness, like the small blue flames in a burned-out log.
“And if you have to shoot someone, Roger, I want you to mean it.”
TWO DOZEN ROUNDS later, he could hit the wooden blocks at least once in six tries. He would have kept it up, doggedly, but she could see the muscles in his forearms beginning to tremble as he lifted the gun, stilled by effort of will. He would begin to miss more often now, out of fatigue, and that would do him no good.
Or her. Her breasts were beginning to ache, engorged with milk. She’d have to do something about it soon.
“Let’s go and eat,” she said, smiling as she took the musket from him after the last shot. “I’m starving.”
The exertion of shooting, reloading, putting up targets, had kept them both warm, but it was nearly winter, and the air was cold; much too cold, she thought regretfully, to lie naked in the dry ferns. But the sun was warm, and with forethought, she had packed two ratty quilts in her rucksack, along with the lunch.
He was quiet, but it was a comfortable quiet. She watched him cut slivers from the chunk of hard cheese, dark lashes lowered, and admired the long-limbed, competent look of him, fingers neat and quick, gentle mouth compressed slightly as he concentrated on his work, a drop of sweat rolling down the high brown curve of his cheekbone, in front of his ear.
She wasn’t sure what to make of what he had told her. Still, she knew enough to realize that it was a good thing that he had told her, even though she didn’t like to hear or think of his time with the Mohawk. It had been a bad time for her—alone, pregnant, doubting whether he or her parents would ever return—as well as for him. She reached to accept a bit of cheese, brushed his fingers with her own, and leaned forward, to make him kiss her.
He did, then sat back, his eyes gone soft green and clear, free of the shadow that had haunted them.
“Pizza,” he said.
She blinked, then laughed. It was one of their games; taking turns to think of things they missed from the other time, the time before—or after, depending how you looked at it.
“Coke,” she said promptly. “I think I could maybe do pizza—but what good is pizza without Coca-Cola?”
“Pizza with beer is perfectly fine,” he assured her. “And we can have beer—not that Lizzie’s homemade hell-brew is quite on a par with MacEwan’s Lager, yet. But you really think you could make pizza?”
“Don’t see why not.” She nibbled at the cheese, frowning. “This wouldn’t do”—she brandished the yellowish remnant, then popped it in her mouth—“too strong-flavored. But I think . . .” She paused to chew and swallow, then washed it down with a long drink of rough cider.
“Come to think of it, this would go pretty well with pizza.” She lowered the leather bottle and licked the last sweet, semi-alcoholic drops from her lips. “But the cheese—I think maybe sheep’s cheese would do. Da brought some from Salem last time he went there. I’ll ask him to get some more and see how it melts.”
She squinted against the bright, pale sun, calculating.
“Mama’s got plenty of dried tomatoes, and tons